Thu 27 Feb, 6-8pm
We're excited to host Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad from The White Pube, for an in conversation event with Liverpool-based artist Frances Disley, to discuss their debut novel Poor Artists.
Event by Dead Ink Bookshop
Tickets: £5
About The White Pube
The White Pube are Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad - online firebrand art critics with a decade's experience of holding the art world to account on issues such as class diversity and institutional racism, while pioneering a singular approach to writing about art and creativity.
About Poor Artists
Poor Artists is the first book from The White Pube's Garbrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, a novel which also functions as a guidebook to the inequalities and absurdities of the contemporary art world. Both wildly funny and deeply depressing, it is an urgent and important read for anyone connected to the creative industries or frustrated by the political and social hellscape of 2025.
Following aspiring artist Quest Talukdar from childhood obsessions, gallery visits and school art lessons towards her professional debut, Poor Artists is a surreal odyssey through a fun-house reflection of the art world, taking in sentient mountains of discarded artworks, artists who live in disappearing magical castles and flesh-eating gallerists. Quest learns profound truths about money and power, and must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself.
Blending imaginative storytelling with dialogue from anonymised interviews with real people in the art world who have all had to wrestle with the same decisions – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a few ghosts, a Venice Biennale fraudster and a communist messiah – Poor Artists is a powerful testimony to the emotional, existential and financial experience of artists today.
About Frances Disley
Frances Disley is a multidisciplinary artist based in Liverpool with a practice that spans sculpture, participation, performance and installation. In collaboration with others (plants, trees and people) she uses her practice as a vehicle to explore networks of solidarity and mutual support.